Abstract:

This research is a contribution to the analysis, measurement and explanation of accountability for public policies. Firstly, I develop a proposal to analyze and measure accountability for public policies. This proposal is innovative since it provides an analytical framework that can be used to measure and compare levels of accountability in different kinds of policies (e.g., health, education, pensions, etc.) or in different contexts (from countries or regions to complex multi-layered authority structures). Secondly, I test the validity of my proposal with an empirical application centered in the health policy in Spain, whose decentralized design allows analyzing the differences in levels of accountability of health policies in each of the 17 autonomous communities. Finally, I analyze the causal conditions that can -or can not- lead to the accountability of this public policy.